Liz Truss (pictured) said middle-class professionals are a ‘blob’ that harms the economy
Middle-class professionals such as doctors, lawyers and teachers are a ‘blob’ that harms the economy, cabinet minister Liz Truss claimed yesterday.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury said they were ‘constantly lobbying to put barriers up to prevent new people joining them’.
At a conference in London, Miss Truss claimed: ‘They can be the lobbyists. They can be the unions. They can be the bureaucrats. They can be the nimbys.
‘I call them The Blob. Gloopy. Treacly. Hard to define. Harder to resist.
‘We know that professional regulations can be a damaging restraint on trade. They can reduce opportunities, keep women out of the best roles, and limit the overall number of jobs available.
Today, licensing is the most restrictive form of occupational regulation in the UK, covering around a quarter of groups in the labour market. We now have more regulated occupations than France, Italy or Belgium.’
In her speech, Miss Truss used a lack of formal qualifications for teachers in free schools as a positive example of the kind of deregulation she wants to see introduced, the Times reported.
She said: ‘We are working hard to address this. We’ve introduced free schools where teachers don’t have to have traditional training and instead bring other experience.
‘We’ve brought nurse associates into hospitals to help the established nursing teams deliver first-rate care. We’ve encouraged the growth of alternative business structures, which can provide certain legal services without having to identify as a law firm.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury was referring to professionals including doctors, lawyers and teachers
‘But we must try harder. For my part, I am doing my best to open up politics, once a closed shop for men only, to more women – and particularly those from the North.’
During her speech Miss Truss held up a mocked-up poster of the Steve McQueen film The Blob, which read: ‘To unleash the UK’s potential we need to fight lobbyists, bureaucrats and nimbys with vested interest in more government’.
She then promised more deregulation for businesses, saying: ‘We also need to liberate business planning in high-growth, free enterprise areas, and remove the strict controls that get in the way of prosperity.
‘That’s why we’re piloting a manufacturing zone in the East Midlands, where all the planning is pre-agreed and manufacturers can get straight to work on building their factories.
‘I would like to see more of the development model used to build Canary Wharf. We could see it bettered up in Leeds or Newcastle — a Canary North.’